Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1887-07-29
FOR YOUNG FARMERS.
The Kind of Capital Which Is Worth Moro
Than Money or Lands.

Than Money or Lands.
"Many estates are spent in the get
ting" Franklin says, and one often
sees, nowadays, some indulgent father
undertaking to give his son a start as
farmer by the most lavish expenditures
for lands, buildings stock, implements,
drainage, etc. This excites the envy
of the friends of another young man
who wishes TO become farmer, and
they groan because he has no capital.
Henry Colman said he heard this pite-
Gus wall so often that he wondered
what signal calamity had befallen this
young man that he should be thus held
up as the victim of misfortune.
He has ordinary talents and capacity
for labor; he has health and strength;
he has enjoyed and improved the adj
vantages of useful education; he has
acquired or is in the way of acquiring
respectable and good trade; he is not
the slave of any bad habits, and, above
all things, his character is good and he
has lived without reproach. Because
he has no moneyed capital you choose
to pity him. Now, entreat you, re-
serve your compensation for some more
worthy object. He does not demand
your pity half so much as your con-
graduation. He is much more an OBJ
ject of envy than of pity. But he has
no capital" Now what is capital? In
respect to trade, or the business of
acquiring wealth, capital is the
means or instrument of acquisition
and accumulation, and is gener-
ally applied to the money or property
on hand not required to be consumed
for immediate subsistence, but which
we can use or apply for the purposes of
begetting more. In an agricultural
view, land which we may render pro-
ductive by cultivation, or the seed
which we cast into the ground, and
which under favorable Gil cumstances
Of situation, season and culture, will
multiply and return to us very often
hundred or thousand fold, is capital.
In a commercial view capital is prop
erly beyond the wants of immediate
subsistence, which yor can invest in
goods or articles of trade. and hold
them in your possession until under
favorable circumstances you can sell,
or exchange, and realize the profits of
such adventure.
Habits of industry, frugality and ex-
actness will secure, establish and in-
crease his credit TO all the extent he
should desire, and give him the COM
mand of the property of others. All
this, then, is captal,-capital of the
best kind. A purely monied capital
may pass away from hm by n thousand
contingencies; but this other moral
capital is under his own control, secure
from all the fluctuations and vicissi-
tudcs of trade and business, and never
can be taken from him without his own
consent.
To say of young man, therefore,
coming into life with lealth, strength,
capacity for labor, good education,
habits of sobriety and frugality, and.
above all, good and unsulliea char
acter that he has no capital is y gross
absurdity and error. He has the best
of all capital, moral capital, and
noblest of all power, moral power; he
has the most certain means of honest
and honorable accumulation of fortune,
and may be sure, under circumstances
ordinarily propitious, to rise to that
competency of influence, respect and
general confidence, and that honora-
BILE measure of wealth and independ-
ence, which should fully satisfy rea.
sonnblc and yirtuous ambition. n.-Btn.
Psrieg Poore, IN american CnltivGlor.